Well, yes, of course . . . but there are lots of other versions of these stories, too.

Okay, I give up. What do the stories of Creation and Noah’s Ark have in common?

They’re both from an ancient, mythical part of the Bible that was never meant to be taken literally. These are symbolic stories about the human condition, and about our relationship with God.

Oh really? Says who?

Just go with me on this one, okay? You’ll see. If we think of these as symbolic rather than literal stories:

We don’t have to waste our time arguing about science vs. the Bible.

We don’t have to think of these as just some old, outdated stories.

We don’t have to worry about which culture’s version of them is “right.”

We can find a deeper meaning in them that is just as true today as it ever was.

Does God really care what we believe about science and history? If the Bible is the Word of God as Christians believe it is, then isn’t it about the things God truly cares about? Spiritual things?

Noah’s Ark at sea

Let’s take a deeper look at the story of the Great Flood, and see what meaning it holds for us. Though the literal story is about a great, world-destroying flood, at a deeper level it tells the story of a great sea change in the human mind.

This change is something that the human race went through thousands of years ago as we made the transition from being pre-literate, nomadic hunter-gatherers to a more settled agrarian culture with spoken language and written literature.

It is also a change that each one of us goes through individually, from our own mythic times of infancy through the awakening of our thinking mind in early childhood.

Yes, all of this—and much more—is in the story of Noah and the Ark.

We are speaking of divine literature, not a human textbook of science and history. The depths of meaning contained within it put all the materialistic, quasi-scientific arguments of the fundamentalists into the shade.

Where does the story of the Great Flood come from?

First, a quick detour into the source of the Noah’s Ark story, and of the many similar stories handed down from various ancient cultures.

These days, the scholarly speculation about the origin of the various flood myths is that they are based on real experiences of major floods in the ancient Middle East and elsewhere in the world. These experiences, passed down through oral tradition, were turned into poetic accounts of great, world-cleansing floods by the ancient poets and sages.

Did the original authors of these stories think that floods big enough to swamp the entire world had actually happened? Probably not. But for a culture that had had its towns and cities swept away by a massive flood, it would feel as if their whole world had been carried off. So the feeling of these stories was true to the experience of whole regions being swept away by floodwaters.

What are these early Bible stories about?

And yet, there was more to it than that. These stories were composed in a pre-scientific age. Their authors were not concerned with science and history as we think of them today. They were concerned with the human condition, and with their culture’s relationship with God. In other words, they were writing about spiritual issues. They cloaked these spiritual issues in symbolic language drawn from powerful events and experiences through which their people and their cultures had passed.

The first eleven chapters of the Bible, up to the stories of Abraham, were written in this mythic, symbolic language. Far from being “untrue,” these chapters contain far deeper truth than any literal, scientific creation story would. They tell us in symbolic language how we humans were created by God spiritually. They then go on to tell us about the spiritual and psychological stages that we passed through both as a human community in prehistoric times, and in our own individual prehistoric times of infancy and early childhood.

Once we realize that the truth of the Bible is not about science and history, but about the human mind and heart, and about our relationship with God, we can set aside simplistic notions about the world being literally created in six days, and literally flooded over the tops of the mountains. We know from science that these things simply couldn’t have happened.

Instead we can open these stories up and see the deeper, spiritual and divine truths hidden within them. What we find when we do this is far more enlightening and far more precious that what appears on the surface. It is a message from God about who we are and why we are here.

From Creation to destruction

The story of Noah and the Great Flood covers four chapters in the Bible: Genesis 6–9. These four chapters are packed with poetic detail about the events they cover. In fact, Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) spends over 300 pages explaining the spiritual meaning of these four chapters in Secrets of Heaven, his massive commentary on the books of Genesis and Exodus. The best we can do here is follow a few of the major themes.

By the time Genesis 6 rolls around, humanity and the earth have gone through a full cycle from being “very good” as originally created by God (see Genesis 1:31) to being utterly corrupt in God’s sight (see Genesis 6:11–12).

How did this happen?

Adam and Eve disobeyed God, resulting in their expulsion from Eden (Genesis 3).

Cain murdered his brother Abel, bringing a curse upon himself (Genesis 4:1–16).

Cain’s lineage continued on a downward course, engaging in further murders (Genesis 4:17–24).

The “sons of God” mated with the daughters of ordinary mortals, creating a race of evil giants (Genesis 6:1–5).

This was the last straw, resulting in God’s decision to wipe out the wickedness from earth (Genesis 6:5–7).

Now remember, these are mythic stories, not literal ones. Each of the individuals mentioned here represents whole races and cultures of people. It’s similar to the common personification of the United States of America as the individual figure of “Uncle Sam.”

Pictured in these early chapters is the decline of humankind from an original state of spiritual awareness and closeness with God to a corrupt state of evil, pride, wickedness, and violence.

Giants of pride and arrogance

For example, the giants described early in the Bible are symbols of egotistical pride: the self-delusional idea that we are big and important—much more important than the “little people” all around us. Compare this contemporary translation of a passage later in the Bible, in which ten of the twelve spies sent into the Holy Land by Moses bring back a scary report about what they found there:

“Everybody we saw was huge. Why, we even saw the Nephilim giants (the Anak giants come from the Nephilim). Alongside them we felt like grasshoppers. And they looked down on us as if we were grasshoppers.” (Numbers 13:32–33 – The Message)

Goliath of Gath, famous from the David and Goliath story, was another one of these giants who saw themselves as great and invincible:

Goliath walked out toward David with his shield-bearer ahead of him, sneering in contempt at this nice little red-cheeked boy. “Am I a dog,” he roared at David, “that you come at me with a stick?” And he cursed David by the names of his gods. “Come over here and I’ll give your flesh to the birds and wild animals,” Goliath yelled. (1 Samuel 17:41-44 – Living Bible)

Well . . . we know how that turned out!

To use a modern idiom, these ancient, mythical giants represent people who are so full of themselves that they think they’re better, stronger, bigger, smarter, and more important than everyone else. As far as they’re concerned, other people exist only to serve them and grovel at their feet. Anyone who doesn’t serve them deserves to die. In fact, they take great pleasure in torturing and killing their enemies—men, women, and children alike—in the most excruciating and shameful ways possible.

This overbearing arrogance and desire to rule over everyone else was the source of all the corruption and violence that existed on the earth just before the Great Flood.

When an undivided mind goes bad

How did things get so bad so fast?

It might help our understanding of what’s going on here if we bring this story a little closer to home.

Though there are certainly exceptions, for most of us when we were first born our parents thought of us as “very good,” just as God pronounced us “very good” when we were first created. The arrival of a baby is usually a happy event. Babies are cute, innocent, and all those other nice things.

“Terrible twos”

However, within a year or two there is often quite a different picture. We go into what’s popularly known as the “terrible twos”—a period of testing limits, defiance, and tantrums that can actually stretch from age one through age four.

At this early time in our life, our parents can’t reason with us and explain to us why we can’t have what we want, or why we must do something we don’t want to do. As the saying goes, we want what we want when we want it. And whatever we want, that’s also what we think, and that’s what we do if we are able. Everything flows seamlessly from our desires through our minds into our actions.

That’s because at this point, our mind is undivided. We haven’t yet developed the ability to think separately from what we want. We aren’t yet capable of thinking, “I know I want to eat right now, but supper isn’t ready yet, so I’ll just keep playing with my toys until it is ready.” If we’re hungry, we want food NOW, not at some future time that we can’t even imagine precisely because it isn’t now.

This can be exasperating for a toddler’s parents. But good parents know that this is just a stage children go through. They know that their child doesn’t mean any harm by it. Parents just have to be patient with their toddlers until they move on to the next stage.

When adults are like toddlers

But consider what it would be like if the whole world were filled with adults who had the spontaneous, undivided, and rather self-centered minds of a toddler. Consider a culture in which in which, like toddlers, everyone wants what they want when they want it, but they have adult bodies and capabilities.

A toddler who’s mad at a parent, sibling, or playmate will often go in with fists flying—but without the strength or coordination to do much damage. However, an adult who is in a blind rage at a fellow human being can and will maim and kill the person who is the target of that anger if not restrained by others.

Consider a world in which the vast bulk of people want their own way at all times—which involves having everyone else cater to their every whim—and they have no mental ability to restrain their angry and murderous rage at anyone who does not serve them like slaves.

This was the mayhem that existed just before the Flood, when “the Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5), and “the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence” (Genesis 6:12).

This was the situation on earth before the figurative Great Flood in the Bible brought about a sea change in the human mind. It was the unrestrained violence and destruction of people who have become arrogant and selfish, and have undivided minds so that they immediately express in their actions everything that they desire.

At this point, God saw that a fundamental change was necessary in the way people’s minds work.

Rooms in the ark

The change required is symbolized by the ark itself—but also by a small detail in the plan of the ark that we could easily pass by as inconsequential. Here is the beginning of God’s instructions to Noah about how to build the ark:

Make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. (Genesis 6:14, emphasis added)

Well, of course it would have rooms. Boats, houses, everything we build for human habitation has rooms, right?

But consider the pre-literate, prehistoric people pictured by Noah. They were still in the hunter-gatherer stage of humanity. They lived spontaneous lives close to nature. When they were hungry they went foraging for food. When they felt the desire, they mated. When they were tired, they went to sleep. Their life was flow-of-consciousness, and seamless with the world of nature around them. They didn’t have houses or boats with rooms. Most likely they all lived communally in one big cave—men and women, old and young, all in a continuum with one another and with nature.

For people like these, the idea of rooms separating people from people and animals from animals would have seemed strange and revolutionary. Rooms? Who ever heard of such a thing?

Yet God instructed Noah to make the ark with rooms.

Think of the ark itself as a symbolic portrayal of the mind of the people represented by Noah and his sons and their wives—a picture of the conscious awareness that they inhabited as they interacted with the world around them. Being inside a vessel such as this, cut off from the rest of nature around them, would have been a strange and new experience for them. And having their mind compartmentalized, to use a modern term, would be a strange new sensation. They were used to everything flowing seamlessly into everything else.

In short, the ark itself, and the rooms that divided it, symbolize a massive shift in the very nature of human consciousness.

Before that time, we had the seamless, undivided minds of an infant or toddler.

Starting at that time, the human mind became divided and compartmentalized.

Though there were many rooms, meaning many separate “boxes,” formed in the human mind at that time, we’ll focus on the most fundamental division:

At the time represented by the Great Flood, God brought about a division between the human heart and mind: between our loves and desires on the one side, and our thoughts and ideas on the other.

From toddler to schoolchild

Off to school

Once again, we can understand this better if we consider the fundamental change that takes place around the age of five in our childhood development. It’s no accident that children traditionally start their schooling around the age of five or six. This is when a new phase begins: a phase of learning and of developing our thinking mind.

What happens to our mind, or consciousness, at that time is a great division between our thoughts and our desires.

For the first time, we can think and understand things that do not go along with what we love and desire. To use our earlier example, if we’re hungry, our parents can explain to us that supper will be in half an hour. Starting at this stage in our life we can actually understand that, and put our hunger on hold while we wait out that half hour. We can understand that even if our desire for food isn’t going to be satisfied right now, it will be very soon—and we’re okay with that.

This is a huge change in the way our mind operates. And it is a change that lasts for the rest of our lives. From that time onward, we have the ability to use our thinking mind to restrain and direct our loves and desires.

If we want to do something destructive, such as killing someone we are angry with, we can tell ourselves that this is not a good idea—that we should take a chill pill until our anger wears off.

If something we want is a good idea, but we can’t have it immediately, we can make plans and follow them in order to bring about in the future what we want in the present.

The change in post-Flood people

This fundamental change in the human mind in ancient times is what allowed certain groups of humans to move forward and thrive while other groups died out.

In the mythic world described by the Flood, those humans who still had undivided minds, but who had been corrupted by arrogance and a desire for power, snuffed themselves and each other out in a Great Flood of irrationality, anger, and violence from which they could not restrain themselves because they did not have the ability to think and do anything other than what they desired in the moment.

However, those humans who developed a divided mind were able to rise above other humans who were still stuck in the earlier phase. They were able to think and reason separately from their desires, and make conscious decisions about the best course of action to take for their tribe and their culture. They were able to set aside present wants in favor of future goals.

The most likely tie-in to present-day scholarship on human development is with the time humans moved from being nomadic hunter-gatherers to the time we developed agriculture and a settlement-based lifestyle.

Hunter-gatherers move with the ebb and flow of the wild fruits, vegetables, and game on which they subsist. They are seamlessly integrated into the ecosystem around them.

Farmers stay in one place, learning how best to work the land, and planning ahead as they till, plant, harvest, and store food and supplies for the dry or wintry seasons after the harvest.

This change in the human mind made possible civilization as we know it today, complete with cities and towns supported by agriculture and industry of various kinds. And of course, it made possible our many institutions of learning, our various public service organizations, and all of the other practical, literary, and artistic elements of advanced civilizations.

What does this mean for our daily spiritual life?

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our lives flowed seamlessly from pure hearts through enlightened minds to useful and compassionate action?

Alas!

Many of our desires are selfish and greedy.

Many of our thoughts are false and foolish.

Many of our actions are hurtful and destructive.

We can wring our hands and wish it weren’t so. But the fact of the matter is that it is so. We can see it every day in the vast wars and petty crimes, in multimillion dollar white collar crime and hundred dollar convenience store robberies. We can see it in the many ways we treat each other badly and give each other pain instead of joy.

And yet, because we do have a divided mind, there is a way out of this mess.

We don’t have to blindly carry out all the foolish, arrogant, greedy, and selfish desires that arise in our hearts. We have thinking minds, and a developing conscience, that we can exercise in order to choose which loves and desires we will and will not act upon.

A divided mind makes spiritual growth possible

That is the key to our ability to be spiritually reborn as new and better individuals. It is the key to our ability to make our world a better place, and to right the wrongs that plague our communities.

Yes, everything hinges on the divided mind that God gave us as we moved from being toddlers to being young children.

Do you dislike who you are right now, and what your life is like? Are there parts of yourself and your daily routines that you are not satisfied with? Do you aspire to better things?

The good news is that we humans now have the ability to direct our own lives using our thinking minds and the principles and beliefs that we have learned. We have the ability to correct our heart when what it wants is selfish and greedy, or when its feelings are self-destructive and self-limiting. We have the ability to picture something better than our current life, and direct our head, heart, and hands toward achieving it.

This is the unique ability that makes us human, and able to become greater than what we now are.

And it was brought about by the sea change in the human psyche represented by the story of Noah, the Ark, and the Great Flood.

Noah’s Ark is not just a children’s story (though it does offer great insights into our early childhood development).

This ancient myth tells a powerful, adult tale of how we humans came to be the civilized, thinking beings that we are today, capable of rising above our lower desires and reaching upward toward a better, more just, more loving, more spiritual, more Godly world.

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Lee Woofenden is an ordained minister, writer, editor, translator, and teacher. He enjoys taking spiritual insights from the Bible and the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg and putting them into plain English as guides for everyday life.

7 comments on “Noah’s Ark: A Sea Change in the Human Mind”

Having said that, I have doubts invading my head in an attempt to destroy my (relatively) newly found faith. This is happening more often by the day.

I can not put a finger to it, but a lot of times there is a voice in my head telling me that a lot of those interpretations are just cherry picked part of the bible and analysed so that it would make sense to us or even that the resulting interpretation is comfortable to us and that there is no real deeper meaning behind it other than just being a fun bed-time story.

This is not supposed to be an attack or downplaying of your work and I am sorry if it comes across as such. I know very well that you and many others put a lot of work into analysing these passages for us boneheads to read and learn from.

I just wanted to voice my doubts in attempt to get rid of them and solidify my faith.

About your doubts, that is natural and even good for any newly adopted faith or concepts or ideas. Having a newfound faith challenged means that you will consider it more carefully and closely. It means that you won’t accept it superficially and unthinkingly, but will examine it, consider it with some doubt, and satisfy yourself that there really is something to it.

I realize this doesn’t really help you with your doubts. You’re still going to have to face them and consider them. But I would suggest that you continue forward, learn more, satisfy your need to grasp more fully and deeply this newfound faith, and give it the time it needs. These are huge new ideas. It takes time to grasp and begin to master them. Your doubts will make sure you don’t accept them just because someone says so, but that if you do in the end accept them, it will be because you have considered them carefully and have come to the conclusion that they are sound and reliable.

Doubt is not the enemy of faith. Rather, it is the guardian of faith. It scares away people who are not willing to put out the effort required to dig deep and develop a sound faith. It makes sure that any faith you do arrive at and hold to will not be shallow, but deeply rooted.

I could refer you to further articles, but I’d suggest instead that you browse through related articles here about various chapters and passages of the Bible, and look around at other sites and perspectives. Spend the time to learn and to satisfy yourself. Don’t just sweep your doubts under the rug. Continue forward with them as your companion. Let them keep you honest until your mind and heart are satisfied and you can leave them behind, their job having been done.

And as always, if you have any specific questions as you read, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Thanks for the reply. I really liked how you called doubt the guardian of faith as opposed to the enemy. It shows doubt in a new light.
In fact, I have managed to overcome previous doubt, such as understanding freedom of belief, past religions and God not being a tyrant.

However, one core doubt still remains and that is whether there is a God in the first place. I struggle with many concepts such as understanding the infinity of God.

To me faith is far more than believing in God and doing his will. It is the longest journey we humans can undertake and it involves moving closer to God, gaining an understanding of His nature and developing a relationship like a child has with a parent instead of the relationship an employee has with his boss.

This is why I feel that my doubts are stopping me. Building as house if a good metaphor for how I view my faith. No matter how many floors a house has, if the foundation is unstable, chances are that it will crumble at one point or another.
I try to learn as much as I can, but my head moves faster than my heart. If I were to give an honest answer about His existence it would be uncertainty. How can I build a relationship with someone I do not know even exists? When I talk to God, does He talk back? I can not tell.

I realize that I just started this journey, but it is discouraging to me.

Belief in God is “The Big One,” as they say. Ultimately, all the rest of our faith depends on that. And that’s precisely why faith in God is not only at the core of our faith, but also at the core of our doubts. It can be difficult to have confidence in God’s existence and presence when so much of our experience makes it look like God is absent or just plain non-existent.

About your head moving faster than your heart, that is the human condition. We can mount up with eagles wings in our thinking and our ideals about what life should be like, but actually getting there is more like slogging up the mountain all sweaty and tired. God intentionally designed us to have mental sight that reaches well out ahead of where our heart and our hands are specifically so that we would have vision and inspiration to continue leading us forward, even if the journey may be much too slow and difficult for our tastes.

Back to faith in God, I would suggest not getting too caught up in whether God speaks to you personally in an audible voice or by obvious signs that are unmistakably God.

The vast bulk of Americans have never sat down for a chat with the President. The vast bulk of Britons have never sat down for a chat with the Prime Minister. But even though they’ve never met him or her personally, very few go for conspiracy theories about the President or Prime Minister being a hoax to dupe the gullible. Rather, they see the President or Prime Minister on the news, and feel the effects of his or her policies and actions.

Similarly, God doesn’t sit down for a fireside chat with every person of faith, for many reasons. But God has spoken to us in many ways, through many people, and of course through the Bible, so that we can “follow God in the news,” so to speak, and feel the effects of what God does. For more on this, please read (or re-read) the article: “Where is the Proof of the Afterlife?” What it says about belief in the afterlife also applies to belief in God.

And as with other matters of faith, have patience, keep your mind and heart open, keep asking those searching questions, and over time you will gain the clarity and faith that you long for.

A good thought. This gave me plenty to ponder about and in doing so I found out a fundamental thing about myself and why I have doubts.

It is me doubting myself more than anything. I am always afraid of making the wrong choice and regretting it afterward. Due to our limited time here I have come to fear regret more than anything. I dread the feeling of having spent an entire life devoted to the teachings of God only to find out in the end that it was all for nought. That is why I hesitate and that is why I continue to doubt. When I look deep within me, every part of me wants to believe without reservation and dedicate to learning but I am afraid of giving in to that.

Finding joy in helping others is what keeps it in balance, but I can not help but wonder if that is enough in the long run.

Glad the article led to some new self-discovery. That’s a very valuable kind of knowledge.

I, too, have regrets about things I’ve done or not done in the past. However, we often learn more from doing things the wrong way than from doing them the right way. When we do things the right way, everything’s copacetic, and we just move on, without necessarily learning anything new. But when we do things the wrong way, things get fouled up a little—or a lot—and we have to dig in and figure it out in the course of fixing it. So all is not lost even when it comes to the things we regret doing or not doing.

That’s not to say we should go about purposely making mistakes in order to learn things. Rather, the mistakes we make flow from areas of ourselves that need some TLC, or perhaps a boot in the rear, to get ourselves on track. Our mistakes and wrongs are not random. They express something about our self and our character that we need to see and deal with. And quite often, unless they express themselves in wrongful words and behavior we’ll never realize they’re inside of us, and we’ll never be able to deal with them. (But see: “How Imagination and Fantasy Help our Spiritual Growth.”) And that’s what the process of spiritual rebirth and growth is all about.

Looking back on my own life, there are plenty of things I wish I hadn’t done, or wish I had done . . . in a theoretical sense. But I am also aware that they led to events and experiences that formed me into the person I am today. It’s all part of the ongoing development of character that is our purpose here on earth.

About the possibility of finding out in the end that our beliefs were all wrong, and it’s all for naught, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head about finding joy in helping others.

There are many religious beliefs that are useless for anything practical in this life. Believing, for example, that faith alone saves, or that Jesus paid the penalty for our sins, is purely theoretical, and doesn’t bring about any actual, practical good in the world. That’s exactly why those beliefs are useless and false.

Real religion is not about theoretical models of salvation. It’s about making the “saved” person into a better person, which means making the “saved” person into a person who loves, cares for, and does practical good for his or her fellow human beings. Any religion that doesn’t accomplish that is false, useless religion.

That is also why I don’t worry very much about whether I might be teaching people things that turn out not to be true. I don’t worry much about it because the whole direction of what I teach is that people need to love God by loving their fellow human beings, which means devoting their lives to doing some practical good or some emotional good or at least some intellectual good for their fellow human beings. If anything I say here prompts people to do that, or to do more of that, then I’ve accomplished my purpose.

And then, even if I turn out to be dead wrong, and there’s no God and no afterlife, my work will still have made this world a better place by inspiring and guiding people to . . . make this world a better place.

So even if I’m wrong about everything, I’d say it’s the right kind of “wrong.” 😉